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OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 




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OBITUARY ADDRESSES 



OCCASION OF THE DEATH 



Hon. Wm. M. Meredith, 



OF I'll I L \ DELPHIA, PA 



Seplenther i6t/t, 1S73. 



P H I L A D E L P H I A : 
IXQl'IRKR KOdK \XI) JOI5 PRINT, .Wl CHKSTXn' S'IRKF.T. 

1873- 



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OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 

TUESDAY, SEPT. i6th, 1873. 

Death of Mr. Meredith 



The Convention met at 10 o'clock, A. M., pursuant 
to adjournment. Hon. John H. Walker, President 
pro tempore, in the chair. 

The death of Mr. Meredith havino- been announced 
by Mr. Walker, President/;'^ tempore: 

Mr. Carey. Mr. President: As senior member of 
the Philadelphia delegation, as well as of the Con- 
vention itself, it has become, Mr. President, my duty 
to ask my fellow-members to suspend, for a few min- 
utes, procedure with the work committed to their care, 
and to direct it to a solemn event which an act of 
divine Providence has commended to our consider- 
ation. 

Since last we parted, but few weeks since, the pain- 
ful anticipations of members have been realized in 
the death of our distinguished President, the Hon. 
William M. Meredith, who expired at his residence in 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



tills city, on the i 7th clay of August, in the seventy- 
fourth year of his age. 

Mr. Meredith was a native of this city and, through- 
out his long life, a resident therein except when 
absent in the discharge of public duties. His father 
was a highly accomplished gentleman of great purity 
of character, occupying a distinguished place at the 
Philadelphia bar. His childhood was blest by the 
genial influences of association with a mother eminent 
for her mental, moral and social qualities, and his 
instruction, begun and long continued at home, was 
subsequently enlarged by collegiate education, to be 
perfected finally, as it was, by special studies and pro- 
fessional and official occupation. His attainments, 
though large, were less conspicuous than those of 
others not his equals, simply for the reason that as a 
consequence of early home discipline they had been 
thoroughly digested, and had become indivisible and 
inseparable portions of his mental character. His 
thoughts, and their expression, were tinged with the 
best sentiments of ancient and modern authors, yet 
were these latter never ostentatiously displayed. 

Mr. Meredith's success in the profession of the law, 
and especially as a barrister, early attracted the at- 
tention of those whose party relations and party in- 
fluence led them to select such as seemed likely to 
become candidates for the popular suffrage, and he 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 



soon, therefore, entered the Legislature ol the State, 
ahnost at once achieving there a distinction closely 
correspondent with his rising inHuence at the bar. 
For many years he was a member of our City Le- 
trislature and President of the Select Council. His 
parliamentary knowledge, and his civic devotion, there 
gave dignity to the place he occupied, and secured an 
amount of respect which, as there is good reason for 
regretting, such positions do not everywhere com- 
mand. 

Mr. Meredith was elected a member of the Con- 
vention to which, in 1838, was referred for amend- 
ment the Constitution of the State. The records of 
the proceedings of that body, and the reminiscences 
of his few remaining colleagues, prove him to have 
been an active and influential member. Throughout 
its sittings he distinguished himself generally by an 
earnest advocacy of propositions tending, as he 
thought, to promotion of the public welfare, but most 
especially by his logical discussion of questions con- 
cerning that judiciary with whose interests his pro- 
fessional education and pursuits so closely identified 
him; and for the maintenance of whose permanent 
dignity he was always a zealous and able advocate. 

In that Convention, as in the Legislature of the 
State, Mr. Meredith's eloquence was marked by a 
directness which left on the minds of his hearers no 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



doubt of either his incUnation or his object. He was 
urave, argumentative, and convincing-, in the lander 
questions under discussion; interesting and pleasing 
in debates of lesser moment; and, thouoh avoidin<r 
all aggression, was, when provoked, pungent in his 
satire and cuttino- in his rebuke. Few men in that 
body were so remarkable for their readiness as de- 
baters, or their promptitude in repartee. 

Mr. Meredith was called to the national councils, 
and, as Secretary of the Treasury in the short ad- 
ministration of President Taylor, there distinguished 
himself by his comprehensive views of the duties ot 
his place and of the great interests of the people he 
represented. 

It was at a trying moment in the experience of this 
Commonwealth that he subsequently accepted the 
office of Attorney General of the State, doing this at 
a personal and professional inconvenience which gave 
to his labors the merit of sound patriotism and 
ereat self-sacrifice. How serious was this latter can 
scarcely be appreciated by any but those close friends 
with whom he consulted at the moment when accept- 
ance was urged upon him by my friend and colleague. 
Governor Curtin, then Chief of the State. Most re- 
luctantly was it accorded, the impression being full 
upon his mind that in his then physical condition com- 
pliance with the Governor's demand, for demand it 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 



really was, must be followed by speedy death. 'How 
important it had been that he should comply, was 
proved by the fact that from the hour of its becoming 
known that he had assumed the legal advisorship of 
the Executive, the storm of vilification ceased. All 
knew that if there had been any truth in the charges 
which before had been daily made, the Governor 
would not have dared to offer him the place. All felt 
that with our departed friend in office, they had a 
guarantee not only that there had been honesty in the 
past, but that there was to be honesty in the future. 
It is rare to find an individual exercisinof over the 
public mind so large an amount of influence as was 
then exhibited; rare to find a man in public life whose 
duties are so thoroughly performed, and with a suc- 
cess so perfect. 

When the President was seeking for men of might, 
of personal, professional, and political distinction, to 
assist in the councils at Geneva, touching questions 
then at issue between Great Britain and the United 
States, he almost necessarily selected Mr. Meredith. 
There were, however, reasons sufficient for warrant- 
ing the recipient of the invitation in declining the 
proffered honor, and in thus avoiding the exposure 
and the labor which acceptance would necessarily 
have caused him. 

These things had passed into history when the 

2 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



election of Mr. Meredith as President of this body, by 
an unanimous vote, gave expression to the perfect 
confidence it had in his parhamentary skill, and in his 
entire mastery of almost all subjects likely to be dis- 
cussed, as well as in the soundness of his patriotism 
and the purity of his life; a confidence shared by all 
who knew him. It was a choice sanctioned and ap- 
plauded by the whole people of our Commonwealth. 

How fully our late President comprehended the 
duties of his place, and how ably they were dis- 
charged, it is not necessary for me to state. I stand 
in the presence of those who witnessed, and will 
testify to, the promptness and impartiality of his judg- 
ments; and who, if hesitating fully to assent to his 
decisions, never for a moment doubted his sincerity 
nor loner withheld concurrence in his views. 

The members of this Convention, when its labors 
shall have closed, will take to their homes a grateful 
recollection of their deceased President, and will do 
justice to the wisdom, integrity, and impartiality of 
his administration. They will have a melancholy 
gratification in associating his memory with the re- 
collection of the dignity and usefulness of the body of 
which they had been members, and of William M. 
Meredith, its head. 

The resolutions which I am about to offer, though 
partaking of the formalities of such an occasion, are 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITLL 



intended as an expression of the ])rol()iind respect 
with which this body recognizes the sterhng worth of 
Mr. Meredith as a man, a citizen, and a statesman; 
and especially are they to serve as testimony of a full 
appreciation of his great services as President of this 
Convention, and of the sympathy of its members with 
the bereaved family, and with a community which 
loses so much in the death of so eminent and so ex- 
cellent a man. 

I offer, Mr. President, the following resolutions: 

Resolved, That this Convention has heard with j)ro- 
found regret the formal annunciation of the death of 
its President, the Hon. William M. Meredith, to whose 
eminent abilities and hearty devotion to the dis- 
charge of the duties of his office, testimony is hereby 
borne. 

Resolved, That this Convention, while expressing 
regret at the loss which it has itself incurred, feels 
it due to itself and to others to offer the expression 
of its deep sympathy to the bereaved family of Mr. 
Meredith, and to the community of which he had so 
longr been a valued and honored member. 

Resolved, That the President be and he hereby is 
requested to communicate these resolutions, properly 
attested by the officers of the Convention, to the 
family of our deceased President. 

Resolved, That a committee of nine be appointed 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



to take order for the preparation of a memorial of the 
deceased. 

Resolved, That this Convention, as a further token 
of respect for its late President, will refrain this day 
from any further labor, and will adjourn till to-morrow 
at lo o'clock, 

Mr. Darlington. Mr. President: I cannot permit 
this occasion to pass without adding a few words 
to what has been already so appropriately said. 
Although I knew Mr. Meredith for some years pre- 
viously, yet my acquaintance with him did not com- 
mence until we met at Harrisburg as members of the 
Constitutional Convention of 1837. That body con- 
tained many of the most distinguished men of the 
Commonwealth, some of whom were advanced in life, 
and had sei^ved many years as representatives in 
Congress, in the Legislature, and in other places of 
public trust. He was then in the full vigor of man- 
hood, possessing a mind naturally strong, highly cul- 
tivated, and stored with varied learning, and was 
gifted with powers of oratory of no common order. 
He at once took rank as one of the ablest debaters 
of that Convention, and when he addressed the body 
he commanded its earnest and undivided attention. 
During the whole period of its sessions — which ex- 
tended over many months — he was constant in his 
attendance and earnest in the discharge of his duties. 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 13 

His views were well known to be highly conservative. 
Strongly attached to the Constitution of 1 789, and 
believing it, as we have heard him express in this 
Convention, to be the best frame of government pos- 
sessed by any of the States — we were not surprised 
to learn that he doubted the wisdom of the proposed 
changes and innovations. When called, as he some- 
times was, in the temporary absence of the President, 
to the chair, he displayed the same aptitude and readi- 
ness in the discharge of its duties as we have all seen 
him exhibit while presiding over this body. 

My intercourse with him ever since our acquaint- 
ance beofan, has been of the most ao^reeable character. 
We have been frequently brought together profession- 
ally, sometimes as antagonists, oftener as allies; and I 
am yet to hear the first intimation of word or deed 
on his part inconsistent with the highest standard of 
professional and personal honor. 

He was one of the most genial companions I ever 
knew. His conversation, full of instruction, was at 
the same time free and easy, and interspersed with 
anecdote and pleasant remark, which delighted all his 
listeners. /^ 

I make no reference to his public services in the 
Legislature, as Secretary of the Treasury of the 
United States, or as Attorney General of this Com- 
monwealth. His memorial will doubtless be written, 



1 4 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

and will be the proper repository of the principal 
events of his public life. 

Upon his election as a delegate to this Convention, 
almost every one instinctively looked to him as the 
proper person to preside over its deliberations. His 
unanimous choice was a deserved compliment to his 
high character and distinguished ability, and the man- 
ner in which he discharged his duty is alike honor- 
able to him and satisfactory to us all. 

During his illness, which was somewhat protracted, 
I frequently called to see him, and generally found 
him cheerful, and hopeful of recovery. He attributed 
his ill-health to over-work in this body, and naturally 
supposed that rest would restore him. On my last 
visit, two days after our adjournment in July, it was 
impossible not to see that his strength was failing, 
and I had the greatest apprehension that we should 
never see him here acrain. 

We are now assembled to mourn his loss, and pay 
appropriate tribute to his memory. His death is an 
admonition to us all that the sands of life are fast 
running out. He was less than six years my senior, 
and there are some older, and many younger here 
than I; yet by the wise provision of Providence we 
know not who next shall follow. Our duty is so to 
live as to be always ready. 

Mr. BiDDLE. Mr. President: It is not because I 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 



expect to add anything to the comprehensive and 
eloquent eulogy that has been pronounced by the 
mover of the resolutions upon our deceased friend 
that I rise to speak; it is because I feel it a necessity 
to say something, on this occasion, of one whom I have 
known, whom I have honored, whom I have revered 
from early boyhood. 

I may be permitted to say in the outset of these 
remarks, that I was allowed the great privilege of 
close, personal intercourse with the distinguished 
deceased, that free interchange of mind with mind 
which enables us truly to form a just estimate of the 
character of a friend. 

In a body like this, composed so largely of members 
of the same profession, it is not perhaps inappropriate 
to refer to the professional life of the distinguished 
dead. Indeed, so much of that professional life was, 
as it were, a public life, because in no question of 
great public interest was Mr. Meredith, for many, 
very many years of his active life at the bar absent 
from one side or the other, that in speaking of his 
professional life we, in a measure, touch upon that 
other life which has been so well referred to in the 
resolutions and in the speech introductory of them. 

Mr. Meredith, born the son of an eminent practi- 
tioner of the law, was so well educated in and imbued 
with the principles of jurisprudence, that at an early 



1 6 OBITUA R V ADDRESSES. 

age he stepped forth as the thoroughly trained lawyer, 
the ready advocate, equal to any forensic encounter ; 
yet his advance was a slow one, and his success but 
tardy, for he neither had, nor affected, the popular arts 
by which practice at the bar is early secured. He 
could not solicit business, business must solicit him ; 
not because he thought it wrong to solicit business, 
but because he disdained it. Success did ultimately 
come, as we all well know, and first in a cause which 
involved not only the interests of his native city, but, 
as it were, the interests of every citizen in this Com- 
monwealth. The exhibition in this case of his great 
legal acumen, his profound knowledge of the early 
history of the Commonwealth, his wonderful mastery 
of all the weapons of advocacy, placed him at once in 
the front ranks of a profession then led by a Binney, 
a Sergeant, and a Chauncey. After the decision of 
the case I refer to, which occurred in the year 1837, 
a case involving the right of the people of this Com- 
monwealth to the full enjoyment of one of the public 
squares of this city, his success was assured and his 
advance rapid; for I feel entirely safe in saying that 
until his call by President Taylor to the Secretaryship 
of the Treasury, no important cause was argued in 
the State in which he was not retained on one side or 
on the other. 

How he conducted the business entrusted to his 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 17 

hands very many gentlemen on the floor of this House 
well know, and it requires no statement from me to 
call to recollection the brilliant and successful manner 
in which his abilities were displayed in the service of 
every client by whom he was employed. 

In the office of Attorney General, which he filled at 
a comparatively recent date, his term of six years was 
marked by a singular devotion to the interests of the 
Commonwealth. It would be rendering but poor 
justice to his character to say that no temptation 
could ever, for a moment, induce him to swerve from 
the strict line of duty. It is not in that way that I 
wish to speak of him ; but I desire to refer to his zeal, 
his devotion to the cause of the Commonwealth, his 
thorough personal identification with the interests of 
the State ; all of which qualities were so eminently 
conspicuous as to impress, in a very marked manner, 
those who were brought into necessary opposition 
with him by the nature of their business. He retired 
from that office leaving upon it, in a striking degree, 
the impress of his great abilities and his high character. 

In concluding this very slight sketch of his pro- 
fessional career, I feel that I am not overstepping the 
bounds of just eulogium if I apply to him what the 
master of Roman oratory said of a great contemporary 
when he characterized him as the most eloquent of 

lawyers, the most lawyer-like in his eloquence, clo- 
3 



1 8 OBITUAR V ADDRESSES. 

quentissimus jurisperitorwn^ jiirisperitissimus eloquen- 
tium. 

But here, in this Convention so lately presided over 
by him, it seems more appropriate to touch upon his 
public life, upon that side of his life which was dedicated 
to the public service, to public affairs. I wish to say 
a few words in regard to his political character. 

Mr. Meredith was born a Federalist. He came 
into the world in perhaps the most exciting period of 
the politics of this country, certainly in as exciting a 
period as ever existed. He was born in the year 
1799, in the presidency of the elder Adams; and in- 
tellectually precocious, he entered as a mere boy 
warmly and sympathetically into the political feelings 
and the political excitements of that day. His attach- 
ment to his own party leaders, or rather to the leaders 
of the party in which he was born and to which he 
adhered so long as it was a party, partook of the ardor 
of his temperament ; yet it was not to the principles 
of the party as such, so much as to the men who led 
it, that he gave his thorough adhesion. He was a 
Federalist, without being strongly attached to any of 
the peculiar tenets of that most respectable party. 
He certainly was not what might be called a concen- 
trationalist, a consolidationist. He was rather the 
reverse, rather a States-rights man. He was not a 
liberal constructionist ; he was riorid in his views of 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 19 

the explication of the great charter which Hes at the 
foundation of our government. It was to the Federal 
party as he conceived it ought to be, rather than to 
the principles which the existing Federal party enun- 
ciated, that he gave his full concurrence. While he 
worshipped the great men of the party, he never 
could have gone along thoroughly with all their 
political peculiarities. When he reached manhood 
he was undoubtedly strongly imbued with many of 
their views ; but with his advent into active life that 
party had practically ceased to exist, for Mr. Meredith 
attained his majority just about the time of the second 
presidency of Mr. Monroe, when, as we all know, 
party opposition lay for the moment dormant, if not 
dead. 

Mr. Meredith was formed to be a debater, and as 
has been very justly said by my distinguished colleague 
from Philadelphia, (Mr. Carey,) his fellow-citizens 
were not slow in discovering his great powers in that 
direction, and at least a decade of years before he had 
become distinguished at the bar, by the unsolicited 
suffrages of the voters of his native city he was 
elected to the Legislature of the Commonwealth, 
where he soon became eminent. 

Let me say a few words here about what I believe 
to have been some of his characteristics as a debater. 
He certainly was in the very foremost ranks in this 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



respect, if not the very first. I disparage no man 
when I say this. Strong, vigorous good sense, 
clothed in nervous language, rising as the subject 
rose to fervor, and often to passion ; directness of 
purpose, singling out the strong points of attack and 
throwing overboard the little ones ; wonderful power 
of repartee; biting sarcasm where he chose to resort 
to it, were only some of the parliamentary weapons 
which he had at ready command. His masterly 
treatment of any great political question has again 
and again impressed the listeners, with admiration. 
How he seized, with instinctive rapidity, the weak 
points of his adversary ; how cogently he drove home 
his own strong blows with sledge-hammer force, many 
gentlemen here have again and again witnessed with 
delight, and almost with approval even when they 
differed from the views of the speaker. 

It has been said here, and truly said, there was 
nothing aggressive in his nature ; but while he was 
not aggressive he held his honor in a wary distance, 
which made it dangerous to offer the slightest offence 
to it, and woe betide the man who incautiously or pre- 
sumingly thought that in the way of attack he might 
safely measure his sword with Mr. Meredith's: his 
defeat was a foregone conclusion. 

Mr. Meredith, without the most indirect solicitation 
on his part, or even on the part of his friends, after 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 



presiding long and well over the local legislature of 
this city, and after conducting for a quarter of a cen- 
tury or so the leading business at the bar here, was 
called by President Taylor to one of the most im- 
portant positions in his gift. That President did not 
live long enough (I think but little over a year) to 
enable him to develop anything like a fixed or settled 
policy, and therefore Mr. Meredith's great abilities 
were scarcely tested in the Treasury Department; 
but his trueness, his integrity of purpose, were shown 
there as everywhere else. His disdain of mere party 
intrigues, of mere partisanship, were conspicuous 
here, as they always had been throughout his whole 
life. He was too little, probably, of a politician to be 
very successful in public life. He dwelt too little 
upon that which is usually uppermost in the thoughts 
and calculations of the mere politician to cope very 
successfully with those who walked nearer the earth ; 
but had he been permitted to hold the position to 
which he was called for its ordinary period, un- 
doubtedly he would have greatly distinguished hims.gl£r^ 

How he conducted himself as Attorney General of 
this great Commonwealth, to which post he was invited 
by our friend and colleague. Governor Curtin, has 
been so well spoken of by my colleague from Phila- 
delphia that I am indisposed to add a single word 
upon that portion of his public life. 



■■ 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



Every man in Pennsylvania, every man in the 
country, felt a sincere pleasure when it was announced 
that he was to represent the United States as one of 
its counsel before the tribunal at Geneva. While the 
fact that he did not finally accept this position was 
not unfortunate for himself, it was certainly so, in my 
estimation, for his country. Had he been present as 
one of its leading counsel, I believe, from my estimate 
of his character, that this country would have been 
spared the humiliation of advancing- pretensions not 
only destitute of justice but even of the cover of plausi- 
bility, and which the good sense of the whole people, 
the moment they were announced, unhesitatingly re- 
jected. Nor would our government have been placed 
in the dilemma from which it was, in part, curiously 
enough extricated by the pronunciation in advance, 
by the tribunal which might have been ultimately 
called upon to adjudicate them, of an adverse opinion 
as to claims which were withdrawn from its considera- 
tion without formal presentation and argument. Mr. 
Meredith would have been a party to no such pro- 
cedure. 

But the crowning event of his life, in my opinion, 
was the position to which he was called in this Con- 
vention, not only by its unanimous suffrage, but by 
the unanimous heartfelt selection of every man here. 
No mere party man, no man who had erected as the 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 



standard by which he was to govern his poHtical Hfe 
mere adherence to party, could have received this 
choice in such a way. It was because every one felt 
and knew that he never could and never did "give up 
to party what was meant for mankind," that Mr. 
Meredith stood in the estimation of this body not 
only as its foremost man, but as the man who was 
entitled to receive the unsolicited vote of every dele- 
gate present. No doubt, in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term, he was a party man so far as to adhere to 
the general policy marked out by his party, subordi- 
nating to the success of this policy any petty or 
private differences of opinion on minor points; no 
doubt he was a party man to the extent of sinking 
unselfishly his real or supposed claims when the 
interests of his party seemed to demand it. But he 
never pre-pledged himself to follow the dictates of 
party or party leaders, without regard to whether in 
his judgment they were right or wrong. Much less 
would he have ever bound himself in advance, under 
the specious plea of adherence to party, to accept un- 
hesitatingly mere party nominations for all offices, 
judicial and others, as they were cast before him by 
party dictators. Mr. Meredith was not that man ; 
and the best authority entitles me to say that more 
than once he overlooked, in this regard, party con- 



2 4 OBITUAR V ADDRESSES. 

sideratlons as altogether inferior to what he conceived 
to be his duty to himself and to his country, 

Mr. Meredith's character was such, his public and 
his private character was so simple, so direct, so free 
from all affectation, he was so accessible in intercourse, 
that we scarcely knew how great a man he was until 
we found ourselves deprived of him. And this com- 
munity in which he lived, perhaps a little cold in its 
external manifestations, a little too much averse to 
anything like demonstrativeness, only felt silently the 
worth and the value of the man who was dwelling in 
its midst. But when Philadelphia, with the whole 
country, was aroused by the intelligence of his decease 
to a full sense of her loss, she then keenly perceived 
and warmly and strongly expressed her sense of the 
bereavement. She has felt and she will long continue 
to feel, in the death of this distinguished man, her 
very great loss ; and she will long continue to search 
for, without finding, another fit to replace him. 

Mr, Dallas, Mr, President: Mr. Meredith's bril- 
liant intellect and extensive attainments were never 
employed ungenerously in his association with those 
less gifted, and to the close of his life he was always 
kindly considerate of younger men, and to the end 
retained, in his intercourse with them, an engaging, 
cheerful courtesy. This thought — impressed upon 
my heart by grateful remembrance of kindness to 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 25 

myself — prompts and emboldens me now to offer a 
humble tribute to his memory. Not that I can add 
anything to that which has already been so well said 
of him, nor that anything which can be said could 
adequately depict the loss occasioned by his death, 
and our deep appreciation of the extent of that loss to 
us. But, sir. It Is not fitting that this hour should be 
allowed to pass without special though brief mention of 
the warm affection with which Mr. Meredith was regar- 
ded by his junior associates, here and elsewhere, nor 
without at least a hurried recognition of that which I 
conceive to be the great lesson of his life for them. 

It Is, Mr. President, a melancholy truth and a sad 
misfortune to the State, that her young men seldom 
Interest themselves In public affairs unless directly 
induced to do so by desire for public office, and hence 
mere seekers of place have, in great measure, become 
our substitutes for statesmen In the councils of the 
Commonwealth, and venal demagogues usurp the 
honors due to patriots. Mr. Meredith was a states- 
man and a patriot In the highest sense, but he never 
sought for office. His time, from his youth upward, 
was better spent In the faithful prosecution of those 
studies which made him the foremost lawyer of his 
time, and so thoroughly fitted him for the performance 
of public labor that It became necessary, upon more 

than one occasion, to call upon him to serve the 

4 



26 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

people in positions which, though beneath his deserts, 

he accepted in obedience to his duty to his native 

State. But, sir, 

"Whom can honors, repute and trust, 
Content or pleasure, but the good and just?" 

Mr. Meredith was, indeed, a thorough lawyer, an 
eloquent advocate, an accomplished scholar and a 
profound statesman, but a sense of honor the most 
keen, and a purity of purpose which rendered all 
other considerations subservient to his own conception 
of right, made him even more than all of these — a noble 
MAN. "Take him for all in all, we shall not look upon 
his like again!" And the teaching of his life, to which 
I have referred, is this: That better in the end than 
power or place, and all that power or place e'er gave, 
is the abiding glory of a life well spent. 

Mr. President, men will always differ in opinion 
upon public questions, and many of us have not con- 
curred in those views which constituted Mr. Meredith's 
political faith; but it has come to be of paramount 
importance that public men — be their opinions what 
they may — should be pure beyond suspicion of ill 
doing, and hereafter that man's memory will be dearest 
to the State who, like Mr. Meredith, shall leave upon 
the pages of its history the inspiring record of an un- 
blemished character and a spotless life. Let those of 
us who are beu^inninof in this Convention as he com- 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 27 



menced in that of nearly forty years ago, take this 
lesson to our hearts, and 

"Let us then be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate, 
Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor and to wait. 

Mr. Landis. Mr. President: It must ever be a 
source of regret that the name of William M. Meredith 
cannot be appended to the instrument which this Con- 
vention is about to lay before a great Common- 
wealth for its approval. His name was subscribed to 
the Constitution of 1838, and as under that funda- 
mental enactment the people have advanced to a 
degree of civilization and prosperity commensurate 
with the greatness of a nationality or an empire, it 
would have been well if the State could have had the 
stamp of his personal approval upon the paper which 
reforms the successful labor of 1838, in which he was 
so illustrious a workman. But whilst we have had the 
benefit of his counsel and presidency for more than 
half the session, it has pleased God, who gave him his 
great mind, to call him from his labors. And as we 
approach the conclusion of our deliberations, we can 
but pause in our task to deplore the loss which both 
we and the people have sustained, and complete, un- 
aided by his great wisdom and experience, the high 
duties imposed upon us. 

I never knew Mr. Meredith till I came into this Con- 



2 8 OBITUAR Y ADDRESSES. 

vention, and, though familiar with his fame, I met him 
when far on the downward walk in life — when his 
name was rich with his life's experience — when re- 
plete with the honor given him by the admiration of 
his fellow-citizens — when, as linking the present with 
the earlier days of the Commonwealth and its dis- 
tinguished sons, he was about to leave the theatre of 
action — and when, in the fulness of years, life and 
usefulness were about to depart together; for soon 

"The hand of the reaper 
Took the ears that were hoary." 

I shall not attempt to delineate the character of Mr. 
Meredith. Others have to-day more appropriately 
and fitly done so, and posterity will vindicate the 
justice of their eulogium. Indeed he needs no monu- 
ment from us, his own deeds and his own qualities 
are the stones in the shaft which will perpetuate his 
name. No man can, as he, appear among his fellow- 
men and labor with the fervor of his mind and the 
affluence of his intellectual resources, guided by his 
zeal, his probity of purpose and high and noble aim 
through all the years of his private and public activity 
without stamping the good impress of his gifts and 
his qualities upon his race and generation — an im- 
press that must outlive the day that witnessed the 
giving back the inanimate clay to the maternal earth 
from which it sprang. 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDLTH.' 29 

It was pleasant in meeting Mr. Meredith to recall 
the triumphs of his earlier years ; that he was the 
cotemporary of Sergeant, Hopkinson, Ingersoll and 
other luminaries of the past ; his encounters with the 
rare intellects of his time ; his reputation as among 
the first of American lawyers ; and when in the vigor 
of his manhood, what must have been his tall and 
manly person — or is it too much to say — his majestic 
presence ! But it was sad to see only too plainly in 
the attenuated form and tottering step, as he came 
daily to the discharge of his last duties, that life was 
ebbing, and the frail hulk must soon be stranded. 

The life of Mr. Meredith, we are told, was a busy 
one. He possessed a vast store of learning, upon 
which his great mind made ample demands, and 
utilized for every purpose to which his attention and 
his energies were directed. This body has often 
witnessed the flashes of his wit, and in social inter- 
course his trenchant repartee and apposite allusion 
gave evidence to his brethren of later day acquaint- 
ance of what must have been in earlier years the at- 
tractive power of his companionship, or the quiver of 
his lighter weapons for his adversaries. With these 
and the many other recollections that cluster around 
the name of Mr. Meredith, I shall claim for myself 
one of the pleasantest of my memories, my meeting 
and acquaintance with the man whose death we here 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



to-day lament. And whilst I here utter this brief and 
feeble tribute to his memory, I know I can add nothing 
to his fame. I cannot hope by any word of mine to 
exalt the high attributes of his character, but, as one 
of the latest of his acquaintances and fellow-laborers, 
I may unobtrusively approach and lay a simple 
garland upon his grave. 

Mr. Meredith is dead. But hope, we are told, 
perished not with the body. He found in the gospel 
of the Nazarene a faith which bore his hope, and that 
faith and that hope outlast the fleeting breath. As 
we gather good from his life, so let us gather counsel 
from his dying. Thrice have we here mourned a dead 
brother ; thrice let us be warned of our own respon- 
sibilities, and of that alleo-iance which we owe to Him 
who came into our midst, and took from the field of 
their latest usefulness, Hopkins, M'Allister and 
Meredith; and in the ecstatic joy, of a perfect hope, 
let us remember those "brighter worlds" to which 
they "led the way." 

Mr. Stanton. Mr. President: The 17th of August, 
1873, will long be remembered by the citizens of 
Philadelphia as the dark day on which passed from 
their midst that most eminent scholar, jurist and 
statesman, William Morris Meredith. 

When a great man dies a nation mourns, and the 
history of our country supplies numerous instances 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 31 

where the halls of legislation, national and state, have 
been draped in mourning- for those who were honored 
and beloved by the people. They died and were 
buried with their fathers, but their names are engraved 
in our hearts, and their illustrious deeds and exalted 
virtues can never be lost so long as intelligence, 
patriotism and liberty shall have an existence. 

To-day we mourn one with whom we were but 
recently associated ; one who presided over our de- 
liberations with rare ability and dignity. During our 
recess he passed away, no more to meet with us in 
this hall where often we have listened with such 
intense interest to his manly utterances and wise 
counsels. The gloom which Mr. Meredith's death 
cast over this city is not dispelled, but hangs about it 
still like a funeral pall. Philadelphia acknowledged 
him as one of her most eminent sons ; eminent alike 
as a lawyer, a statesman, a citizen, and a proper peer 
of her Sergeants, her Ingersolls, her Whartons, her 
Binneys and a long line of men who have made 
illustrious and famous her bench and bar. 

Standing here this morning, we are especially re- 
minded of our departed brother, and realize that each 

word 

" Which he hath uttered ; every varying tone, 
And even each change of feature, are consigned 
As gems to memory's casket." 

In his death the bar has lost a luminary of the first 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



magnitude; society an amiable gentleman; the church 
a shining light ; literature and art a devotee ; the 
State a pillar of strength, and the republic one of its 
most faithful and heroic champions. Few men com- 
bined a greater amount of talent in the respective 
fields of law, art or science, than did Mr. Meredith. 
In politics he was firm and consistent, upholding all 
the fundamental principles of our government and 
constantly keeping in view the great truth that 
religion and virtue are necessary to the success and 
perpetuity of our free institutions. Mr. Meredith was 
not ambitious for popular honors, in the sense of the 
term obtaining in these times. He was not a man to 
bend to the dictation of corrupt political factions. 
Independent in spirit, he spurned the chicanery of men 
who sought to entrap him for the sake of using his 
name and influence in furthering their own nefarious 
schemes. He was emphatically an honest man. In 
his own heart there was no corruption, and he could 
not tolerate it in others, and this fact, known to the 
community, gave him its confidence without any 
reservation. 

Singularly quiet and unobtrusive, he had struggled 
for years at the bar before his great abilities were 
fully recognized, but during that period his mind was 
stored with the wealth which, later, was developed in 
such plenitude and power. In 1824 he entered the 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. ^t, 

arena of politics, and represented this city in tlie lower 
branch of the Legislature, where he distinguished 
himself in debate, and secured the esteem and con- 
fidence of his constituents by his unremitting attention 
to their interests. As a member of City Councils, and 
of the Constitutional Convention 1837-8, Mr. Meredith 
became more widely known, and his abilities were 
appreciated not alone within our local boundaries, but 
throughout the Commonwealth. 

President Taylor, recognizing his great ability and 
sterling integrity, called him into his cabinet as Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, a post which he filled until the 
accession of Mr. Fillmore to the Presidency. In 1861 
Governor Curtin appointed him i\ttorney General of 
Pennsylvania at an hour in our country's history when 
an incorruptible patriot, with a cool head and a brave 
heart, was required to discharge the high duties of 
the office. President Grant, not unmindful of his 
talents and profound legal acquirements, tendered Mr. 
Meredith the position of senior counsel for the United 
States Government before the Geneva Tribunal of 
Arbitration, but his advanced years and waning 
health caused him to decline the imposing honor. 

Last fall the people of Pennsylvania elected him a 
member to the Convention sitting in this hall to 
revise their Constitution. They remembered his 

valuable services in the Convention of 183 7-8, and 

5 



34 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

were anxious again to invoke his counsel and secure 
the benefits of his ripe experience and practical 
wisdom. On the assembling of this body Mr. Meredith 
was elected its President, and how well he discharged 
the functions of that honorable, but onerous office, 
you all know of your own observation. 

I do not attempt to analyze the character and legal 
life of the deceased ; others on this floor, who knew 
him better, through daily intercourse with him in the 
profession, can do him ampler justice. We knew him, 
however, as a man upon whose escutcheon there 
never fell a stain ; a man whose virtues shone forth 
with resplendent glory ; whose life was spotless and 
uncontaminated by contact with the corruptions of the 
times. He has passed from our midst; from the 
fields of his usefulness in this world, to that higher 
and more glorious realm, where the good shall live 

forever. 

" Sure the last end 
Of the good man is peace. How calm his exit ! 
Night dews fall not more gently to the ground, 
Nor weary, worn-out minds expire so soft : 
Behold him in the even tide of life ! 
A life well spent — whose early care it was 
His riper years should not upbraid his green ; 
By unperceived degrees he wears away, 
Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting." 

Mr. SiiARPE, Mr. President: We are conscious 
once again of the presence of death in this chamber. 



HON. WILLI A AI M. MEREDITH. 35 

Since we crossed its portals on the sixteenth of July 
last, his messenger has summoned hence the dis- 
tinguished and v^enerable President of this Convention. 
A prince and a great man has fallen in our midst. 
It seems hard, indeed, to realize that William M. 
Meredith lives no longer upon earth ; that he hath 
gone down to the grave and shall come up no more ; 
that he shall return no more to his house, neither 
shall his place know him any more. But he hath 
gone to his rest, full of years and crowned with honor. 
After having scaled all the difficult ascents of profes- 
sional success, after having attained the summit of pro- 
fessional distinction, after having shed the effulgence 
of his radiant intellect upon the jurisprudence of his 
country and his age, after having filled the ear of the 
nation with his great fame, he now sleeps well, where 
the weary be at rest. 

I purpose not to enlarge upon the character, virtues, 
and career of this most remarkable man. Tongues 
far more eloquent than mine have done all this. 
Voices that have a much better right than mine to be 
heard on this melancholy occasion have spoken in 
fitting terms of the illustrious dead. Hearts that were 
knit to his by the closest ties of friendship, and ce- 
mented with his by a life-long intimacy and companion- 
ship, have come up into the mouth, and given utterance 
to their uncontrollable emotions. I have no ambition 



3 6 OBITUAR Y A D DRESSES. 

at all to thrust myself unduly upon the sacred solem- 
nities of this sad hour. I only desire to add my humble 
tribute to the volume of eulogy that has gone forth 
from the hearts of this august body. I only wish to 
say that the chambers of my heart are also draped in 
mourning, and that in them dwells too the same con- 
sciousness that pervades this entire assembly, of the 
irreparable loss which we have sustained in the death 
of Mr. Meredith. The temptation to do so much was 
irresistible, for "I did love the man and do honor his 
memory, this side idolatry, as much as any." It is 
certainly safe to assert that there is not one of us 
whose heart-strings do not tone themselves in harmony 
with the voice of praise, and whose judgment does 
not commend the encomiums that have been heard 
here to-day on behalf of Mr. Meredith. 

It matters not in what light we gaze at him, he 
dazzles us. It matters not in what pursuit we follow 
him, he was in all alike unapproachable. As a lawyer, 
learned, profound, unequalled. As an advocate, trans- 
cendently persuasive and eloquent. As a statesman, 
broad-minded, catholic and deeply versed in the science 
and true principles of government. As a patriot, im- 
bued with a zeal and love of country far surpassing 
the passion of a devotee. As a citizen, progressive, 
enterprising, public spirited, and a lover of order. 
As a gentleman, without stain and without reproach. 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 37 

As a man, big hearted, benevolent, charitable, of un- 
impeachable integrity, and with the most exquisite 
sense of honor. As 2i pater fainili as, a model of all 
the domestic virtues. There was met in him such a 
combination of rich equalities, great faculties and rare 
traits, as is seldom found in one man. But with all, 
he had an* unassuming modesty and gentleness of de- 
portment that added additional lustre to the glories 
that clustered about and adorned his character. 

He possessed also in an eminent degree that crown- 
ing ornament of all mental stature, good common sense. 
Without this treasure, the most shining parts and 
most brilliant faculties can only achieve but temporary 
success. The meteor that flashes across the midnight 
firmament, and then goes out in darkness forever, is 
a fitting emblem of genius without the ballast of a 
sound judgment. But the intellect of Mr. Meredith 
burst not in meteoric showers. It shone upon every- 
thing it touched, with the steadiness and fixedness of 
the rays that come down from the sun. For he was 
not simply brilliant; he was also cool-headed. He had 
not the flash of genius merely, but with it the clear- 
sightedness, calm deliberation, and sound understand- 
ing of the philosopher. 

Neither was he one "to split the ears of the ground- 
lings." He had no ambition at all for this. He had 
a native dignity of character, and an intense self- 



SS OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

respect which hfted him high above all the arts and 
tricks of the demagogue. He was a statesman, but 
not a politician in the present popular and degraded 
sense of that term. He was a party man but not a 
partisan. He had faith in the utility of parties in a 
republic, and he believed his party was right. He re- 
joiced in its triumph — not for the sake of the spoils of 
victory, but for the sake of its principles. Loving 
his country as he did, he could not help loving his 
party, for to him the welfare of the nation was bound 
up in the success of his party. He had no confidence, 
however, in the Jesuitical dogma that the end justifies 
the means, and therefore he loathed with intense 
loathing the bribery, corruption, and intimidation which 
are the crying evils and the burning shame of the 
politics of the present times. No earthly consideration 
could have induced him to countenance the employ- 
ment of any sinister means or improper agencies, 
although they might have been demonstrated ever so 
clearly to be absolutely necessary to party triumphs. 
He had an abidinor confidence in the common sense 
and inborn integrity of the people, and he infinitely pre- 
ferred honorable defeat to dishonorable victory. His 
whole aim was the happiness of his race and the pros- 
perity of his country. His lo)'alty to his party was 
meant for this and this only. Who can help but 
admire him for it ? 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 39 

Mr. President, I feel that it would be presumptuous 
for me to undertake to weigh in my small balances 
the value of the life work of Mr. Meredith. I am 
wholly conscious that I have no capacity to take in the 
full measure of that oreat man. But I trust that 
indulgence will be granted to a brief allusion to one 
or two phases of his career that have enlisted my 
closest attention, and excited my highest admiration. 
Coming to the bar as I did at the immature age of 
twenty, I had, of course, no experience in the fierce 
conflicts of the forum, and no knowledge of the pro- 
fessional athletes that struggled for the prizes in that 
arena. 

But he whose death we mourn to-day was then in 
the zenith of his great fame, and its effulgence reached 
even me in my quiet obscurity. The heart of the 
young professional aspirant must necessarily have 
some idol. Its altar must burn incense to some Deity. 
I could claim no exemption from this common frailty — 
if frailty it indeed be. Hence Mr. Meredith became 
the object of my hero-worship, for he had won victories 
more highly to be prized than the conquest of king- 
doms. His brows were wreathed with ofreener and 
more honorable laurels than those of the war-worn 
and blood-stained chieftain. It became my delight to 
glean from every source, and to garner up in the cells 
of memory every fact and circumstance that entered 



40 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

Into his early professional life. With what interest I 
pondered and mused and wondered over the wild 
gusts of passion that must have swept through the 
chambers of his heart, and the roucjh conflicts that 
must have torn the realms of his mind, while he 
patiently waited for public recognition and appreciation 
durinor his lone novitiate. 

Such a contemplation was consoling and somewhat 
flattering, for it proved that genius must sometimes at 
least temporarily wear the fetters of mediocrity. 

But when my mental vision, passing beyond this 
contracted and unnatural orbit of such a brilliant 
luminary, followed his subsequent career and grasped 
its magnitude and power ; when I read and studied 
the great cases which his intellect had illumined; when 
I came to know and comprehend, imperfectly it is true, 
the mental sweep that could by a touch make the most 
abstruse principles luminous to the commonest under- 
standing, then indeed I suffered the pangs of hope- 
less despair, for I realized that his goal was as far 
beyond my reach as the sun in the firmament. It 
was by such mental processes that I came to fix the 
professional standard of Mr. Meredith, for I had very 
few of the opportunities which some of the gentlemen 
of this Convention almost daily enjoyed of hearing 
and seeing him in this, to me, by far the most inter- 
esting walk of his life. To me he was the epitome of 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 41 

all that was admirable and great and worthy of imita- 
tion in a lawyer. He would as soon have thought of 
violating the decalogue as of violating his professional 
word. He was one of that old-fashioned type of 
lawyers that stoutly doubted the professional ethics 
that would teach that a client's cause is to be grained 
at all hazards, and by any means. " Whilst he was 
loyal to his client, he was equally loyal to truth and 
justice. If he did not always gain his case, he always 
saved his self-respect and honor. 

For the passion that weds me to my profession, I 
do therefore the more honor him, because he, most of 
all his contemporaries, did exemplify its dignity and 
pre-eminence above all other temporal pursuits. 
And I am glad to hear upon this floor that my appre- 
ciation of him as a lawyer has been fully sustained by 
those who are so much more able than myself to form 
a correct and discriminating estimate of him in this 
reofard. 

Time will permit but a passing allusion to his duties 
and position as the President of this Convention. His 
unanimous election to that dignified office was not 
only hailed with delight here, but also throughout the 
Commonwealth, as the harbinger of that reformation 
in political and governmental affairs which the people 
so devoutly longed for, yet scarcely dared to hope for. 
It was a fitting seal to that popular judgment which 



42 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

had long since singled him out and commended him 
as the first citizen and great glory of his native city 
and State. His government here was characterized 
by urbanity, impartiality, promptness and dignity. 
Such was the weight of his character, and the sense 
of his intense honesty of purpose with us, that his de- 
cisions became the unquestioned law of this body. 
His administration has left behind it no private 
grievance to canker in any bosom, and no feeling of 
intentional slight or personal injustice dwells in any 
heart in this assembly. It seems to me that it is the 
experience of every one of us, that he was one of the 
very few great men who grew greater the nearer you 
approached him. 

It was, therefore, with melancholy forebodings and 
sad misgivings that we observed day by day the clay 
tabernacle that anchored his great spirit to earth 
gradually yielding to the assaults of disease. But he 
refused to put off the harness of active life so long as 
his spent frame could endure its weight. But though 
dead he yet liveth, and will live whilst learning and 
virtue and genius and moral ofreatness shall command 
the homage and admiration of the sons of men. 

Mr. CuRTiN. Mr. President : I had an expectation 
that the formal ceremonies of this Convention would 
occur to-morrow, and I would thus have had an oppor- 
tunity of putting in proper and formal language my 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 43 

reflections upon the occasion of the death of its 
President, fully aware that that would be more re- 
spectful to the body than to offer any remarks in the 
crude form in which I fear they will now be heard. 
However, I shall have accomplished all that seems to 
be necessary on my part as a member of this body 
and personal friend of our late President when the 
declaration is made that every word uttered by the 
venerable delegate who moved the resolutions in such 
fitting, eloquent and truthful words now before us 
meets my most sincere and hearty approbation, and 
Mr. Meredith's professional career has been so well 
portrayed and so forcibly and beautifully expressed 
by his other colleague from Philadelphia (Mr. Biddle) 
that further remarks on either phase of his life and 
character would seem to be scarcely necessary. 

This is the third time since our sessions commenced 
that we have been summoned to mourn the death of 
a colleague. William Hopkins, a wise and useful 
man, was the first to fall, and then that earnest, 
sincere and eminently practical man, H. N. M'AUister, 
whose death left a void so painful in the community 
In which he lived that all feel it. And now we are 
called to pay a fitting tribute to the memory of our 
really eminent and distinguished President. Who 
knows how soon the portals of this hall may open 
again and the grim monster enter for another victim ? 



44 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

And we would not if we could know who of the living 
may be the next to fall. I do trust that the survivors 
may complete the great task committed to them by 
the people of the State and that we will not be again 
called to such a sorrow. 

We bow before the wisdom of Providence in the 
death of our fellow-citizen and colleague, and there is 
no mark of official respect which this body can pay to 
the eminent ability, learning and virtue of Mr. Meredith 
that is not deserved. The tribute of admiration, of 
gratitude and love, which wells up warm from the 
human heart when a bereavement so heavy is suffered 
will follow him to the grave, and it may be truly said 
that if the blessings of the people of this State were 
flowers the grave of Mr. Meredith would be clothed 
in perpetual bloom. 

The fame of a great lawyer dies with him, or at 
least dies with the generation that surrounds him. It 
is for those who enter the military service, or fill offi- 
cial place and distribute patronage, to live perpetually 
in history. The most fervid eloquence, the clearest 
logic, the deepest learning of the lawyer is only held 
in remembrance during- the lives of those who en- 
countered him in the legal forum or associated with 
him. In the judicial office, the most useful but the 
most unostentatious of all the departments of govern- 
ment, requiring the first minds, the deepest learning 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 45 

and the highest integrity, men are soon forgotten, and 
the fame of the judge, however eminent in his Hfe and 
character, are only known and remembered by the 
lawyers who practiced before him, or who read the 
books which contain the beauty of his language, his 
profound learning and illustrate his unsullied integrity. 
The lawyer or the judge has little more than this to 
expect, although his learning may be superlatively 
great and his life blameless. But it is equally true 
that while credulity and ignorance may be imposed 
upon in other professions, while the most learned 
physician may scarcely earn his bread and the em- 
pyric grow rich by imposition; while it may be said 
without irreverence or disrespect, that the super- 
stitious and illiterate may accept teachings that are 
not founded upon the sacred and ever living truths 
of our religion, and are not made pleasant and accept- 
able by the beauties of thorough literary training, no 
man can be eminent as a lawyer unless he has gifts 
and preparation that are apparent and real, for his 
duties are performed in the public gaze, in the pre- 
sence of courts learned in the law; he deals with the 
interests, the passions and the sympathies of humanity, 
and he encounters in his professional life antagonists 
who draw from him all his learning and challenge to 
the front all his resources, and a pettifogger may have 
a measure of success in the devices which degrade 



46 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

the profession, but he never has, he never can, Impose 
himself upon the confidence of the people. 

Some men at the bar excel in keen, sharp wit; 
some by the graces of their eloquence and the mag- 
netism of their personal presence; some have mas- 
tered our language; others are remarkable for deep, 
accurate learning; others have intense industry and 
ability for constant labor. Either one of these quali- 
ties may make the successful practitioner, but it takes 
them all to make the accomplished lawyer. Of all 
the men of this day, of the living and the eminent 
dead of the State, no man combined all these qualities 
in such perfect harmony as Mr. Meredith. And then 
with his great learning, his profound logic, his ex- 
alted qualities as a statesman, his keen wit, his force 
and brilliancy as an advocate, and his appreciation of 
humor and a consciousness of power that could not 
be disturbed, and a memory which retained all that 
passed in it and waited like a generous hand-maid 
upon his great qualities, there was around and about 
him that glory of the human character — virtue and in- 
tegrity. It takes them all to make an accomplished 
lawyer and a leader of the American bar, and our 
dead President possessed them all in a most eminent 
degree. 

If Mr. Meredith had a fault it was that he was over- 
sensitive as to his own reputation and character. He 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 47 

could not bear to be suspected of doing wrong. The 
very soul of truth himself, he expected to be dealt with 
truthfully by all who surrounded him. Alive, con- 
stantly, tremblingly alive, to the sacredness of his own 
character and reputation, he gave his hours of leisure 
to the society of those in whom he recognized such 
qualities. It is anomalous and yet it is true that these 
qualities stood in the way of Mr. Meredith's occupy- 
ing high official place. It is strange that a man thus 
gifted by nature, thus learned, with his known purity 
of character, should not have held the highest official 
positions in the nation. But there are arts and 
devices known in American politics to which Mr. 
Meredith could not from his nature and traininof 
descend, and he passed a long life of labor and pro- 
fessional success, admired and respected by his 
brethren at the bar and by the community in which 
he lived, rarely holding any official position worthy of 
his own merits. ^ 

It is true he for a time filled the office of Secretary 
of the Treasury; but, as has been well said, not long 
enough to develop there his great qualities as a states- 
man. It is true that he was called to preside over 
one branch of the government of this city for many 
years, and that he served as a member of the Legis- 
lature, and twice in conventions called to reform the 
Constitution. It is equally true that he held the office 



48 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

of Attorney General of Pennsylvania during- six years, 
four of which were days and nights of anxiety, of labor, 
and surrounded by the convulsive throbs of the most 
wonderful war of modern times, when his oreat 
qualities were given to the service of the country, and 
only those who were near him measure justly the 
value of the service. The distinguished and venerable 
gentleman from Philadelphia (Mr, Carey) has said 
that he accepted with reluctance the office of Attorney 
General. That is true, and the Executive from whom 
he received that office is not ashamed to say to-day, 
in this distinguished presence, that he did earnestly 
solicit Mr. Meredith to take a place near him as his 
chief adviser, and that his acceptance of the office of 
Attorney General dissipated a cloud which hung over 
the administration, and renewed confidence and gave 
new vigor to executive power. For his services there, 
if for no other act of his life, the people of the State 
are under grateful obligations to him, and the Execu- 
tive he served under a lasting debt of gratitude 
which he will ever feel and acknowledge. 

I would not speak of Mr. Meredith in his family 
relations. Those who knew him best, in this city, 
know how dear he was to those around him. Those 
who knew him best know his affection, his indulgence, 
his kindness, and with what degree of love his family 
always surrounded him. There it is too sacred fo^- 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 49 

us to intrude. God will apply balsam and balm to 
wounds He made. But I desire to say to you, gentle- 
men, delegates from this city of Philadelphia, that you 
do not know what pride our late President had in 
your city. If there ever was a man born in Pennsyl- 
vania who understood the true interests of the State, 
and fully appreciated the virtues and the good quali- 
ties of her loyal and true people, that man was William 
M. Meredith. If ever there was a man in Philadel- 
phia, distinguished amongst the living or the dead, 
who had especial pride in your city, that man lies in 
his grave, and we are paying cold formal honors to 
his memory ; for never, at any time, did he forget the 
city of his birth, the friends of his youth, or the pride 
he had in your prosperity and individual happiness. 
When away from the city its history and men, and its 
future, were amongst his favorite topics of conversa- 
tion. 

But, Mr. President, the great event has occurred, 
and for Mr. Meredith the end of earth! There is for 
us to venerate and remember the fame that he 
gathered in his great life, and learning and know- 
ledge he garnered with so much care, and his racy, 
quick wit, and his fervid eloquence, and charming 
social qualities and wonderful powers of conversation, 
and to so live that when we are called from earth the 
living may think of us as in sincerity and sorrow we 
7 



5 o OBITUAR Y ADDRESSES. 

now speak of him. We will remember him, and all 
that is said of him, during our lives, and who will then 
remember the orreat and oood man. Let us in this 
Convention do what we can by any ceremony, by 
speech or resolution, to perpetuate the memory of 
our most enlightened and distinguished colleague, 
who honored this city by his presence and dignified 
this Convention as its presiding officer. 

Mr. Wright. Mr. President: It is proper that the 
district which I, in part, represent should have a voice 
in the pending proceedings. And I, therefore, claim 
the attention of the Convention a few moments, while 
I add the tribute of my commendation to the many 
excellencies of the distinguished man who lately occu- 
pied the chair you are now chosen to fill. It was not 
my privilege, sir, to be intimately acquainted with Mr. 
Meredith, as he and I resided in different parts of the 
State and practiced at different bars; still he was 
known to me for many years. Indeed, near thirty 
years ago he paid me the honor, whilst I was a resi- 
dent of Bucks, of being a guest at my board. It was 
the first time I had been introduced to him. He, 
then, appeared at the bar of that county in the trial of 
a cause, and I call to mind at this hour the plain, 
courteous and dignified type of his demeanor at the 
bar. I remember the terse, pointed and earnest way 
in which he submitted his legal propositions to the 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 51 

court. But what an address was his to the jury! The 
state of facts in proof which other counsel had elabo- 
rated by the long hour, this man, in the exercise of his 
astonishing power of condensation, cramped into the 
narrow space of a few minutes. But the brevity of 
the speech detracted nothing from its force. The 
whole ground was covered, and the jury took in the 
case at a glance — their minds were not over-burthened 
by a mass of verbosity. He impressed me as the 
true model for imitation on the part of young beginners. 
I noticed, on this occasion, that he took no notes of 
testimony, yet on the tablet of the great advocate's 
memory, every particle of the evidence, documentary 
and oral, was indelibly imprinted. He had no trouble 
in calling from this storehouse of the brain any portion 
of it needed. 

Again I had the pleasure of seeing this renowned 
lawyer, a few years ago, at the Wilkesbarre bar, 
where my distinguished friend from the city, (Mr. 
Woodward,) as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
was holding a special session. Those masterly traits, 
of which the delegate from Philadelphia (Mr. Biddle) 
has made such truthful mention, were at this time 
grandly displayed. And allow me, sir, a reference to 
an instance of his incomparable humor which con- 
vulsed both court and audience. A question arose 
as to what was, in law, \\\(t filiiig of a certain paper in 



5 2 OBITUAR V ADDRESSES. 

the office of the Secretary of State. The opposing- 
counsel contended that suspending it on a string, in 
the Secretary's room, was a legal filing. Mr. Meredith 
retorted by saying, "if that was so, the murderer, 
Probst, (who had slaughtered a whole family just 
below the city,) had a few days past been most 
effectually Jiled, as he had been suspended on a very 
strong string, by the sherifi" of Philadelphia." 

But, sir, on this occasion, where many desire to 
speak, it is commendable to be brief. I therefore 
close by adding the expression of my deep regrets, 
to those of my fellows, in a Providence we all have 
occasion to deplore. As a public body, we are deprived 
of his wise teachings, his extended learning, his great 
experience, and that nervous oratory that fixed atten- 
tion and produced good results. 

Mr. J. N. PuRviANCE. Mr. President: I do not feel 
fit on this occasion to speak, yet I would not be doing 
justice to my own feelings — the present promptings 
of my heart — if I were to remain silent. 

Few men have lived in Pennsylvania that filled a 
larger space for brilliancy of intellectual power than 
our deceased brother member, Mr. Meredith. We 
scarcely feel competent to speak properly of the great 
and good characteristics of the distinguished Meredith. 

Eulogiums upon the life and character of the dead 
are often extravagant in expression, but it may be 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 53 

truthfully said that too much in honor of Wm. M. 
Meredith cannot be said, for he filled the full measure 
of greatness and goodness. 

My first personal acquaintance with Mr. Meredith 
was when I met him, some twenty-five years ago, as 
a member of the convention of the Protestant Episco- 
pal church of the diocese of this State. , He was an 
active participant in the debates and one of its most 
honored and able members. No question seemed 
new to him, and in meeting in debate Binney and 
Sergeant and the late Chief Justice Lewis and other 
like distinguished laymen, Meredith on all occasions 
proved himself the equal, in clear and logical argu- 
ment, of any of them. His greatness consisted not 
alone in his unsurpassed legal and literary attain- 
ments, his broad and comprehensive views as a states- 
man, his unselfish and devoted patriotism, but, deeper 
and better than all, in his zeal, rational and pure, in 
the cause of the Christian relieion. 

It is not my purpose to repeat the many marked 
and honorable events of his life. They have been 
well and ably referred to by the distinguished gentle- 
man from Philadelphia (Mr. Carey) and others. 

The most beautiful eulogium that we meet with any- 
where is that pronounced by the Hon. Horace Binney 
on the life and character of Chief Justice Tilghman, 
and we have but to read it and see in it every grand 



5 4 OBITUAR Y A DDR ESSES. 

sentiment therein uttered by Mr. Binney an appro- 
priate application to our distinguished, honored and 
loved Meredith. 

Mr. CuYLER. Mr. President: Deeply as I feel the 
solemnity of this occasion, if I consulted my own feel- 
inofs I should be silent, for I can add nothinof to the 
admirable analysis of Mr. Meredith's character which 
has just been given by the gentleman from Franklin, 
(Mr, Sharpe,) nor anything to the impressive beauty 
of the tribute which has been paid to his memory by 
the distinguished delegate from Centre, (Mr. Curtin,) 
whose long and close personal as well as official re- 
lations with him enable him to speak with so much of 
appreciative force and judgment of Mr. Meredith's 
character and of his eminent public services. But 
thirty years of professional life, which in its earlier 
struggles was cheered by the kind commendations of 
Mr. Meredith, and in which afterwards sometimes I 
felt his steel as an opponent and at others was grandly 
aided by his association as a colleague, forbid that I 
should be entirely silent on this occasion. 

But, sir, there are some events which are of their 
own nature so eloquent that no utterances of human 
lips can add to the impressive power with which they 
touch our hearts and move our sympathies ; and death 
is one of these. Nothing can be more eloquent than 
that silence which the very presence of the King of 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 55 

Terrors himself inspires ! Three times since this 
Convention first assembled has death entered through 
its open door into our very presence, and beckoning 
to one of our number, has led him forth from our 
midst, never again to return to us from the silence 
and the solitude of the grave, whither he led him. 
We listen to the sound of their retreating steps till 
they fall no more upon our ear ; we linger about the 
spot and long for their return and hope that they shall 
come again ; but they return to us in this world no 
more forever ! But though they have gone from us, 
they do still abide with us ; not indeed in the flesh. 
We miss the genial smile, the kindly pressure of the 
hand, the eye that sparkled at our approach, and the 
lip that bade us welcome. These are gone forever; 
but, in a higher and a truer sense of the word, they 
do still live and abide with us always. They live with us 
in the pleasant memories of well spent lives. They live 
with us in the good they have achieved. They live with 
us in the impress they have left upon the world in 
which they lived and moved and acted an important 
part. And now, sir, death has come again and has 
called from us the honored gentleman who graced 
the chair to which you have this morning been elected. 
He was full of years, and full of honors, although his 
unwearied shoulders still bore the harness of an 
active life. Such a death, though sad, is not melan- 



5 6 OBITUAR Y ADDRESSES. 

choly, for Mr. Meredith had achieved all that life 
could give. Fame was his, and honor, and troops of 
friends, and crowned with the grand fruitage of a well 
spent life, he was gathered at last to his fathers, while 
the tears of a sorrowing Commonwealth bedewed his 
grave. 

And now, sir, what can I say with regard to the 
character of this eminent and gifted man, after that 
which has been already so well said this morning? I 
need not speak of his public life. It has been so 
recent and is so fresh in all our memories that it needs 
not to be recounted in this presence, and yet we 
cannot think of it without the sad reflection that with 
all those grand capacities for usefulness in public 
station which adorned the character of Mr. Meredith, 
the period of his public service was comparatively so 
small. Is it, sir, a fault, is it a defect in our institu- 
tions, is it a lack of appreciation in the American 
people, is it from any cause a lack of power in the 
American people to do that which they should do, 
which has robbed this Commonwealth and this nation 
of the inestimable services which the noble capacities 
of this man would have rendered to this State and to 
the country at large ? Is there not somewhere a 
defect that while all intelligent minds confess and did 
confess while he lived that rarer gifts for public service 
had never been before garnered up in any man than 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 57 

in him, still that man failed to attain the highest honors 
of public position ? It was no loss to him ; his char- 
acter would have been no grander with that sort of 
appreciation, but it was a loss to the people ; it was a 
loss to the Commonwealth ; it was a loss to the nation 
at large, that this man of grand abilities, found under 
the operation of our institutions so little opportunity to 
apply those abilities through a long life in public station 
for the welfare and the public benefit. The true arena 
for Mr. Meredith was the Senate of the United States, 
where he would have been the peer of any of those 
brilliant statesmen who have illustrated and adorned 
that body in its most palmy clays, or the bench of the 
Supreme Court, where his name would have been 
illustrious, and his fame as a jurist made a permanent 
inheritance of our country. 

Sitting here to-day in the discharge of a statesman- 
like duty let us inquire and consider is there anything 
we can do that shall, in the future, when God shall 
gift the world with men of rare intellect such as his, 
and rare adaptations for public usefulness, may secure 
them to the public service. 

But, sir, the grandest achievements of Mr. Meredith's 
life were professional; and, as has been most truly 
and most sadly remarked this morning by the gentle- 
man from Centre, (Mr. Curtin,) they pass away; for 

the fame of a great advocate, no matter how great his 

8 



5 8 OBITUAR V ADDRESSES. 

fame may be, is written in the water. All those 
glorious gifts of intellect, that power of repartee, that 
wonderful irony, that scathing use of sarcasm, that 
powerful heart that by its own emotions moved all 
other hearts with which it came in contact, these have 
left their impress, to be sure, in the results that have 
been achieved, but they have passed away and will 
soon be forgotten, for the material in which the ad- 
vocate works is the air, and as one writes in vain 
upon the air so is it with the reputation of a great law- 
yer. It is a sad thought that it should be so, but it is 
a true thought, impressively true. His fame is as 
transient as the emotions which his eloquence inspired. 
Their memory extends not beyond the living genera- 
tion, and with them it passes away and leaves no 
record to survive. 

Mr. President, in this gentleman were garnered up 
the rarest and the most wonderful gifts of advocacy 
that I have ever known or probably any of us have 
known to be combined in any one individual, — vast 
learning, wonderful logical power of mind, skilful 
analysis, powerful sarcasm, a fund of humor that 
moved your heart and your feelings so that you scarce 
knew whether to laugh or to cry; a power to mould 
other men's minds into sympathy with his own, and to 
work out the persuasive results of the great advocate, 
surpassing those that I, at least, have ever known to 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 59 

exist in any one individual. But they are gone. 
When this generation shall have passed away, they 
will cease to be remembered. Even now their record 
abides chiefly in the homes that have been made 
happy, or with those whose rights have been vindi- 
cated, or whose interests have been protected; but 
beyond these scarce a memory abides. It was my 
fortune to be thrown into intercourse with Mr. 
Meredith, from the accident of professional relations, 
under circumstances that, perhaps, gave me peculiar 
opportunities of knowing how true it is that what I 
have said with reo-ard to him this mornine is a correct 
delineation of his character. I have seen Mr. Meredith 
in conflict with some of the most accomplished advo- 
cates in our profession, who, in my own time, have 
adorned the stage of action. All of us will recognize 
in Mr. Stanton a great, a learned, and an eminent law- 
yer, and yet I hesitate not to say that Mr. Meredith 
was immeasurably his superior in the accomplishments 
of a great advocate; for while Mr. Stanton had vast 
learning, powerful logic, and an earnest and forcible 
manner, he lacked the humor, the wit, the exquisitely 
fine power of analysis which so remarkably character- 
ized Mr. Meredith in his great professional efforts. 
He could not appeal to the imagination as Mr. 
Meredith could. He could not take strong hold 
upon the hearts of those whom he addressed, and 



6o OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

move them to action, as Mr. Meredith was so capable 
of doing. He had not that same magical skill which 
Mr. Meredith possessed, when he played upon the 
heart strings of a jury as some skilful player upon an 
instrument sweeps its chords and renders them vocal 
with the sympathies, which for the time, move his own 
heart. 

It is, perhaps, out of taste to allude to a gentleman 
now living and a member of this body, and I should 
hesitate to do so, but the gentleman from Luzerfie, 
(Mr. Wright,) has this morning alluded to him — I mean 
our friend and colleague. Judge Black. Perhaps the 
grandest professional struggle that it was ever my 
fortune to witness was the very one which was referred 
to by the gentleman from Luzerne, the contest be- 
tween the Commonwealth and the Atlantic and Great 
Western Railway, Mr. Meredith being the Attorney 
General of the State, with regard to the consolidation 
of the three divisions of that road in three different 
States into one road. None who were present on 
that occasion — and there are some here, besides my- 
self, who were present — will ever forget the wonder- 
ful powers of logic, the marvellous sarcasm, the 
tremendous struggle of those two legal giants on that 
occasion. 

I might go on and multiply illustrations, but there 
are others doubtless desirous of speaking. I did not 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 6i 

desire to speak, and I have been betrayed into the re- 
marks I have uttered, because I felt that coming from 
the same bar and representing the same profession, a 
duty rested upon me which forbade me to be entirely 
silent. 

Mr. Woodward. Mr. President: Just returned 
from a long journey, I had no intention whatever of 
occupying any time in the Convention to-day, but I 
am told by friends around me, for whose judgment I 
have great respect, that it is my duty to say some- 
thing; and if it be, it is a duty which I can perform 
with a good conscience and with great respect to the 
memory of Mr. Meredith, as much so as in respect to 
any man of my acquaintance who could have been 
snatched from us by death. 

Mr. President, in the old time the friends of Job 
mourned with him in silence; but in our day we cele- 
brate our erief with words. It is an American habit, 
and perhaps it is wise to express all we feel. The 
words that have been uttered this morning are things. 
They are "apples of gold set in pictures of silver." 
They have proved grateful to my feelings as the friend 
and admirer, life-long, of Mr. Meredith, and I trust 
they will prove a solace to his afflicted family. 

Mr. Meredith's life and career have been so fully 
discussed by those who have preceded me, that it 
would ill become me to occupy the ground that has 



6 2 OBITUA R Y ADDRESSES. 

been so well cultivated. But, having sustained two re- 
lations to Mr. Meredith, in life, of great importance, I 
may be pardoned for briefly alluding to them. The 
first was as a fellow-member of the Reform Convention 
of 1837, to which my friend from Chester, (Mr. Dar- 
lington,) has already alluded, and I entirely concur in 
the statement made by that gentleman as to the promi- 
nent, the commanding position of Mr. Meredith in 
that Convention as a public debater. Indeed, sir, in 
all the experience I have had in life, sometimes am- 
bitious to listen to public orators, I have never wit- 
nessed a debate that could compare with that which 
occured between Mr. Meredith and the late Mr. 
Stevens. I doubt if there be anything in the annals 
of our country which, if properly presented, would so 
impress the public mind as the scenes of that day. 
Why, sitting beside me was a coarse, uneducated, 
though honest and worthy man, who had been brought 
up to a business that was as well calculated to harden 
the human heart as any other, and as Mr. Meredith 
poured out the thunders of his sarcasm and invective 
upon the head of Mr. Stevens, that man was moved 
almost to tears. "My God," said he, " Mr. Woodward, 
this is too hard on him." And yet he was no admirer 
of Mr. Stevens. I cannot detain you by any further 
allusion to that scene. 1 cannot reproduce it. I wish 
I could. Mr. Stevens, as you know, was a man of 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 63 

great ability; he was a man of rare eloquence and a 
man of infinite sarcasm; but that day he found "a foe- 
man worthy of his steel." That day his batteries were 
silenced utterly. 

I want to allude to one other passage in Mr. 
Meredith's life, in which I be re relation to him. In 
1852, the good people of this Commonwealth placed 
me upon the Supreme Bench. That brought me into 
direct and constant intercourse, professionally, with Mr. 
Meredith, for he was largely engaged in the business 
of that court. I had known him slighdy before the 
Reform Convention ; I had known his reputation in the 
Legislature well; I knew him very well in the Reform 
Convention; and now I was not only to hear him but 
to feel him as a lawyer at the bar. 

Mr. President, let me tell you that courts of justice 
composed of mere men of like passions and sensibili- 
ties with ourselves, are impressed by those sterling 
qualities of character which some counsel bring to the 
advocacy of their client's cause, and it is no uncommon 
thing to hear lawyers complain of judges that they have 
favorites at the bar ; and if you analyze this complaint 
you will find that the favorites are men of learning, 
men of honor, men whom the judge has learned from 
experience that he can trust, and therefore they are 
favorites. If I were speaking in the presence of men 
who had had experience on the bench, they would 



64 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

recognize the truth of this remark. Judges have no 
favorites in any bad sense of that word, but it is a 
delight to a judge or a bench of judges to see before 
them a man who they know would not mislead them 
for any fee that might be paid him ; to see before 
them a man whose object is not so much victory as 
truth ; a man who has informed himself before he 
attempts to teach others ; a man of integrity. And 
if, to these sterling qualities, he adds what our deceased 
friend possessed in an eminent degree, wit and humor 
and address, such a man is most acceptable to the 
court, and he is in Qrreat dancjer of fallinof under the 
invidious remarks of others as beiuQ^ a favorite of the 
court. Professional ethics, sir, are not studied as 
much as they ought to be. If a lawyer has a case 
before a judge and knows that the authority upon 
which he is asking the judge to rule that cause has 
been itself overruled, I hold he is bound by the 
highest consideration of truth and of the oath he has 
sworn to present the law to the judge as he knows it 
exists. He has no right to impose upon the court 
with a case which he himself knows, though the judge 
may not know, has been overruled. This man, sir, 
of whom we are speaking would have suffered martyr- 
dom before he would have Imposed upon a judge a 
case as evidential of the law when it was within his 
knowledge that that case had been overruled. He 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 65 

would distinguish that which was distinguishable, but 
be the consequences to his argument what they might, 
he w^ould exhibit the mind of the law to the judge just 
as he found it ; and therefore the judge would trust 
the adv^ocate. That is the way that Mr. Meredith 
grew in the confidence of the Supreme Court and of 
all the courts before which he practiced. That is the 
way that any lawyer may acquire the confidence of a 
court ; it is the only way. Trick, falsehood, suppres- 
sion of the truth belong to another class of practition- 
ers. Mr. Meredith was incapable of either. 

Mr. President, had Mr. Meredith's lot been cast in 
Rome in the best days of the republic or of the empire, 
amongst those orators who thundered in the Senate, 
he would have won the highest civic honors and been 
accounted " the noblest Roman of them all." Had 
Mr. Meredith's lot been cast in England, w^here from 
the lowest point in the profession to the woolsack 
itself the profession has gradations, genius like his 
would have passed through all these stages to the 
highest with rapidity. I undertake to say that there 
has been no man in our day who has occupied the 
woolsack or any other exalted position in the judiciary 
of Great Britain as worthy of the place, and who has 
illustrated it with so great a variety of elegant learn^ 
insf as Mr. Meredith would have done had he been 

bred at the English bar. 
Q 



66 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

But, sir, he was born a Philadelphian. He lived 
here. He was an honor to this city and to this State. 
Some gentleman remarked this morning — I believe it 
was Mr. Biddle — that while Mr. Meredith belonged 
to the old federal party he nevertheless was a sort of 
States' rights federalist. That is true. I do not 
believe that there ever lived in Pennsylvania a citizen 
who loved Pennsylvania better than he ; who was 
truer to her true interests and her true honor. No 
politics, no inherited maxims, nothing that he had 
been taught in the old federal school would ever have 
induced Mr. Meredith to surrender one jot or tittle of 
the honor or the interests of his native State. Like 
other thoughtful men, he understood how the relations 
of the State to the federal government could be as 
harmonious as the planets of our solar system, how 
each could revolve around its own centre whilst it 
occupied its orbit. He would keep the State in its 
own orbit : he would keep the federal government in 
its centre. As to the modern idea that I have seen 
in print over the signatures of responsible public men, 
that the federal government made the States, that 
the States were indebted to the federal government 
for their existence, Mr. Meredith was incapable o 
being misled or imposed upon by such a solecism, 
such an absurd inversion of our political history. No, 
sir, he was a Pennsylvanian. His heart was too large 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 67 



for this city, great as this city is ; it embraced the 
whole Commonwealth ; and if you want to see how 
he vindicated his own relations to the internal improve- 
ment system of Pennsylvania, go to the volume of 
Debates which contains that controversy between 
him and Mr. Stevens. No man in the Legislature 
occupied a more prominent or influential position in 
behalf of the system of internal improvements of 
Pennsylvania that pervaded every part of the State 
than did Mr. Meredith, and the accusation which Mr. 
Stevens brought against him, that the City of Philadel- 
phia was unfriendly to the interior portions of the 
State, was met and answered from the journals and 
from the current history of the country in the most 
triumphant manner, so much so that it has never made 
its appearance in public since. 

Mr. President, allusion has been made to a scene 
which I remember with great interest. Gentlemen 
have alluded to a debate at Wilkesbarre before the 
Supreme Court in the year 1865 or 1866. It was 
summer. We were in the habit of meeting in July to 
finish up the work of the year. The other judges of 
the court insisted upon accepting an invitation to hold 
that term of the court at Wilkesbarre. I was opposed 
to it myself for reasons that were personal, but I was 
overruled. The court met at Wilkesbarre. A num- 
ber of important cases, among wl]ich was the one 

: P 



68 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

alluded to by Mr. Cuyler, were to be argued there, 
and, sir, it was a rare collection of rare men. Mr. 
Meredith, Judge Black, Mr. Cuyler, Mr. Porter, Mr. 
Wharton, Judge Church, Mr. Biddle, Mr. Walker, 
and others like them were in attendance. The case 
was an important one. These counsel were divided 
upon the one side or the other. The Supreme Court 
had never sat in that interior town before and has not 
since. It excited great interest. Not only all the 
young lawyers went to the court house, but the ladies 
went, the people generally went ; the court house was 
filled with beauty and intelligence that day. 

W^ell now, sir, what impression was produced by 
the struggle between Mr. Meredith and Judge Black, 
over that case, you may infer, when a lawyer of great 
respectability told me afterwards that he was going to 
take down his sign and shut up his shop. Said he : 
" I find I am wrong ; if this is the way to practice law, 
I am no lawyer." I said in reply: "that is nonsense, sir, 
you are a young man. Mr. Meredith told me that he 
waited twelve years for a case after he was admitted 
to the bar, and that he employed those twelve years 
in studying the old entries and pleadings, the State 
trials, which he read, not for the dramatic interest of 
the State trials, but for the pleadings." He stiuiied 
law, in other words, and here were the fruits ; and, I 
added, " thlg man has made himself what he is by 



■■ 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 69 

labo)-; there is no royal road to success in our profes- 
sion more than any other ; it is labor, 'Improbus 
labor om7iia vincit! Instead of tearing down your 
sign, go to work afresh, read the old entries, as Mr. 
Meredith did, read the State trials, read the history of 
the common law ; get imbued with it, and by and by 
you will be able to wield such a lance as you witnessed 
in the hands of this giant." It was a grand spectacle, 
that ! I would not have alluded to it if other gentle- 
men had not done so, but they have stirred up a 
memory which you will excuse me for enlarging upon 
in the way I have done. I would like to mention 
other instances of Mr. Meredith's professional rela- 
tions. I cannot see that there would be impropriety 
in my alluding to one of them. 

I think the first time I was called on to hold the 
Court of Nisi Pritis in this city, after I came upon the 
bench, a case was on my list which was a replevin^ 
but upon opening the record I found it to be a case 
in admiralty which involved the title to the ship 
" Royal Saxon," an Irish vessel lying at Walnut street 
wharf, which had been libelled in the federal courts 
for seamen's wages — had been attached by a foreign 
attachment by a creditor of the owner ; and here was 
a conflict between the federal and State jurisdiction 
as to the ship, involving, as it necessarily did, on one 
side, much of the admiralty law. Well, sir, I was 



70 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

alarmed, for while I had read somewhat about ad- 
miralty law in my younger days, I never had tried a 
case in admiralty in my life, nor seen one tried. But 
there was no escape. The case must be tried, Mr. 
Meredith was counsel on one side and Judge 
Cadwalader and some other gentleman on the other. 
The cause was tried. Mr. Meredith came up to the 
bench after the jury retired, with the remark that he 
was not in the habit of complimenting judges, but 
said he, "you have got all the admiralty law in your 
charge." I said : " Mr. Meredith, we have no ad- 
miralty law up in Luzerne county, I never saw any 
before ; and I was alarmed at the prospect of admin- 
istering it in this case," He was kind enough to say 
that the case had been well tried. The jury rendered 
a verdict in his favor. It went to our Supreme Court, 
and they affirmed it. It went from there to the 
Supreme Court of the United States. It was argued 
before a bench lacking one judge. The eight judges 
differed equally, four and four. It was ordered to a 
re-argument. It was argued again before a full bench, 
and was affirmed by a single casting vote. If gentle- 
men choose to read the case of the " Royal Saxon," 
in the reports, they will find that I state it correctly. 
Of course it was a close case. 

Now, sir, what I want to say Is this : That, in the 
kindest way, Mr. Meredith guided me in that first 



HON. WILLIAM iM. MEREDITH. 



71 



admiralty case that I ever tried, and he guided me 
aright, as it turned out in the end, by a single casting 
vote of the Supreme Court of the United States. 
Chief Justice Taney dissented and delivered a dis- 
senting opinion, but a majority affirmed our judgment. 
Why, sir, a professional life is full of such remi- 
ni^scences. Somebody has said that a great man has 
departed. A great man, indeed, sir! We did not 
appreciate him. It is the habit of the American mind 
not to appreciate their great men. The American 
people seem not to discover the good qualities of a 
man until he is dead. The old Romans treated their 
public men differently. If a general achieved a victory 
for the Roman arms, a triumphal arch was erected, 
he was welcomed home with wreaths and banners and 
music, and orations were pronounced upon him, and 
he was permitted to know what his fellow-countrymen 
thouorht of him. And so were men of orenius, whether 
orators or poets, honored with public ovations. But, 
in our day, the case is very different. The living man 
is continually belittled. He is regarded as in the way 
of somebody ; he is slighted ; he is neglected ; and 
yet, when we look at his works, when we listen to his 
thoughts, after death has set its great seal upon him, 
we all discover that our fellow-citizen was indeed a 
great and good man. W^e withheld the meed of 
praise during his life, but we hasten to bestrew his 
grave with flowers, now that he is gone. 



7 2 OBITUAR Y A D DRESSES. 

Mr. President, in that inimitable form of prayer that 
is used at the grave, prescribed by the Church of 
England, we are directed to "render hearty thanks for 
the good examples of all those who, having finished 
their course in faith, do now rest from their labors." 
"Hearty thanks," sir! "Hearty thanks" are due only 
for great blessings; and is it not a great blessing that 
we have such an example, the example of such a life 
as Mr. Meredith's, his learning, his acquisition of 
knowledge, his use of that knowledge in illustrating 
his profession, his high-toned honor that never knew 
a stain, though he would have felt a stain worse than 
a wound. Yes, sir, let us be thankful for the good 
example of this man, especially now that his work is 
finished. There is no more danger to him. There is 
no mis-step that he can take. His labor is done; his 
work is finished; his record is made up forever. And, 
sir, allow me to add, in conclusion, that he died as he 
had lived, in the faith of Christ ; because, without a 
touch of fanaticism about him, with no ostentation in 
his relieion, Mr. Meredith was an humble and faith- 
ful believer in Christ, and a member of Christ Church 
in this city, and for many years an honored repre- 
sentative in the Diocesan Conventions, as we all know. 

Sir, I rejoice to honor such a man. I would our 
land were full of such men. I know he was a man of 
honor and integrity. I know he was a man of learn- 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 73 

ing- and ability. I rejoiced to see him occupy the 
chair which you, sir, so honor. I mourn his removal 
from us, but bow in humble submission to the Divine 
will. 

Mr. Armstrong. Mr. President : Were I to follow 
the dictates of my mere inclination, I should be silent, 
and yet I have so profound a regard for the memory 
of that great man whose place death has made vacant 
in our midst, that I feel impelled to lay my tribute of 
respect upon this monument which we are rearing to 
his memory. 

It often happens that on occasions like this, eulogy 
runs riot, and many things are said which calm re- 
flection might not justify, but I believe it would be 
difficult to say anything of Mr. Meredith, either in 
eulogy of his personal character or of his high attain- 
ments, which the facts would not amply justify. 

My first acquaintance with Mr. Meredith was as 

junior counsel in an important cause some eighteen 

years ago. I am proud to believe that from that time 

till his death I enjoyed his personal friendship. 

Nothii^g in the intercourse which occasionally I was 

permitted to enjoy with him, so impressed my mind as 

the genial kindness, the courtesy, the forbearance, and 

the consideration which he always manifested for the 

opinions of those who in his presence could not fail to 

be conscious of their great inferiority. He was doubt- 
10 



7 4 OBITVA R V ADDRESSES. 

less fully aware of his own great powers, but they 
never led him to any vain display of learning- or any 
offensive assertion of superiority. 

I do not rise, sir, for the purpose of adding anything 
of fact to what has been already so well and so fully 
expressed, nor to attempt any analysis whatever of 
his character. All this has been far more aptly and 
ably done than I could do. I will only add there has 
been no commendation expressed in which I do not 
most heartily concur. 

His great learning was manifest in a thousand ways. 
In a case only two years ago in which I had the satis- 
faction to be associated with him, involving the rela- 
tions of the clergy to the church, and involving also 
the correlative rights of the clergy as citizens, and re- 
quiring an exhaustive examination and consideration 
of the canon law of the church from its earliest date, 
Mr. Meredith not only brought to its consideration 
his accustomed discrimination and profound learning, 
but I know that he examined with untirinor care the 
canons of the church in the original language, and 
verified every translation we had occasion to make 
by his own personal examination and reading In the 
original Latin, 

It has impressed me strongly as conspicuously 
characteristic that he was always equal to the occasion. 
It is one of the clearest indications of men of great 



HON. WILLIAM M. MEREDITH. 75 

genius that, placed in whatever situation they may be, 
they are always equal to the demands which are made 
upon their learning and their ability. This striking 
feature of Mr. Meredith's character was always ap- 
parent, whether as member of the Legislature, as 
member of both the Constitutional Conventions of 
the State, as Secretary of the Treasury, as Attorney 
General of the Commonwealth, or in the distinguished 
course which marked his professional career. He 
never was found wanting in any position he ever 
occupied, and I believe no higher indication of true 
genius can be found. 

He was a man of rare observation of men, of man- 
ners and of thinofs. He crathered information from 
all sources, and his judgment and reflection made 
them all his own. 

He was one of those rare men who found 

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
vSermons in stones, and good m everything." 

It was characteristic of his life. Nothing escaped his 
observation, and upon all occasions the information 
he possessed was ready to his hand. 

Mr. President, I forbear to speak further. I have 
said this much simply because in my ardent admi- 
ration of the man, in my deep respect for his memory, 
and in the friendship which I am proud to feel that I 



7 6 OBITUAR V ADDRESSES. 

enjoyed while he Hved, I could not allow die occasion 
to pass without this brief tribute of respect to his 
memory. 

The President. There is a blank to be filled with 
a number, before the vote is taken on the resolutions. 
Will some gentleman move to fill the blank ? 

Mr. Stanton. I move to fill it with "nine" as the 
number of the committee. 

The motion was ag^reed to. 

The President. There is another blank as to the 
hour of meeting to-morrow. 

Mr. Lilly. I move to fill that blank with ten o'clock. 

The motion was agreed to. 

The President. The question now is on the reso- 
lutions which have been read. 

The resolutions were unanimously agreed to. 

The President appointed Henry C. Carey, of Phil- 
adelphia, George W. Woodward, of Philadelphia, 
William Darlington, of Chester, J, McDowell Sharpe, 
of Franklin, John N. Purviance, of Butler, George 
W. Biddle, of Philadelphia, John B. Guthrie, of Alle- 
gheny, M. Hall Stanton, of Philadelphia, and George 
M. Dallas, of Philadelphia, Committee ordered by the 
resolutions. 

The President. The Convention, under the resolu- 
tions adopted, stands adjourned until to-morrow 
morning, at ten o'clock. 



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